My beautiful homeland

I have many homes, there's the one in Kent where I live with my good Lady, there's also my parents house in Gateshead, although I never lived there long, but there's also the North-East of England where I was born and where my roots come from. It's this aspect I look too when I tell my friends I'm going home and it's where a bit of magic still plays on my emotions. Yes the North East is a bit of an economic disaster area, many of the jobs are now government issue types in the civil service and make-work job creation schemes. Quite a bit of a come down for an area that was once one of the great industrial heartlands of the UK, produced ships as well as mined coal for the whole of the country and had the largest armament manufacturers outside of London. Sadly such days are gone though the people remain resilient if somehow staunch Labour supporters, despite all the crap Labour have handed out to them over the years.
But as for scenery, well you can't beat it, I walked along a section of the Roman Wall from Steelriggs to Housesteads Roman fort with my kids, dog and good Lady just drinking in the view.

Just a small part of the 74 miles the Romans built as a reminder of just who owned the land South of the Wall. It's not as some would like to believe the border between England and Scotland, that's much further to the North of Berwick, nor do the people of the area class themselves as Scots or even Borderers, they're English, complete with Northumbrian accents.

It's just not something you really see in the South of England, though there are many areas with their own beauty, though few where it is so wild and untouched by man's civilising influence, only the stonewalls of the fields marking where years of backbreaking labour have gone into pushing back nature, indeed many of the local houses owe much to the Roman Wall as ready cut building material.
We also enjoyed some good beer as well as good conversations in the local hostelries, the variety being as much and as varied as any pub in the country, though again much threatened by the establishments crusade against anything they deem to be harmful to us, the overwhelming opinion being they should mind their own business, though few seem ready to take the fight back to them yet.

I'm back home from home now, tomorrow I'll take a look at what's been happening back in the world and offer an opinion. Tonight I'll dream of wild Northumbria and the stark beauty of the land of my birth.